Читать книгу Your Child Is One Click Away From Pornography - Elena Laguarda Ruiz - Страница 8

The history of pornography is a reliable record of the attitudes that society holds towards sexuality, the human body, different erotic practices and their representations.¹

The word pornography has its origin in two Greek words: pórn, (prostitute) and gráphein, (record, write, illustrate) to which the suffix y, a progression of ia, is added (condition of, property of, place of). Based on its etymological origin, it could be defined as “a depiction or illustration of prostitutes or prostitution” and it has been present throughout history from ancient times in writings, codices and paintings, which sought to transgress taboos and provoke the viewer.

However, pornography is a more recent term. It was used for the first time in 1769 by the French novelist Nicolas Edme Restif and it was not widely used until 1819. In English it became a familiar word in the middle of the 19th century. In 1899 the term in Spanish was incorporated into the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy of the Language.

There are multiple definitions of pornography, all written from the perspective of an ideology that either exalts or demonizes it, unable to leave aside the inevitable discussion on whether or not it should be tolerated. For the purpose of this book, we will define it as all those materials, writings, images or reproductions that represent nudes or sexual acts with the purpose of provoking sexual arousal in those who watch them. However, on a deeper level, we coincide with the opinion of Peter Wagner, one of the first pornography historians, who defines it as a realistic written or visual presentation of any sexual behavior with the deliberate intention of violating existing and widely accepted social and moral taboos.²

Since its most ancient origins, the function of pornography has been to break with social conventions; it has always been a space of dissent from the established order. Just as the Bible and religious texts began to be distributed in the year 1450 with the birth of the printing press, the circulation of texts, engravings and books with sexual content also began its propagation. Starting in the 1800s, the invention of photography, and later cinematography, fueled access to provocative images of desire to a much higher number of spectators. Pornography represented a radical and transgressive approach to the body and sexuality that drew on the progress of science and technology. It questioned the moral rules and religious dogmas of its time, demystifying the body and sexual relations, recognizing the existence of female and male desire. Pornography was a banner of the revolutionary and free-thinking movement. Paradoxically, throughout history, pornography has also reflected established patterns of sexual behavior and gender roles, representing women as submissive and passive while men are depicted as dominant and aggressive. Furthermore, much of it reflects the exploitation of women without this issue being questioned at all, as it wasn’t being questioned in society itself.

Throughout history, many political and religious leaders have positioned themselves as defenders of public morality and against pornography to which they have attributed all past, present and future social evils, rendering it legal or illegal in accordance with the ideology in power. Thus, at one time it was illegal, for example, for Black men to view pornography in which white women were depicted, or for women’s nipples to be visible. Nowadays, the convention of what is allowed to be shown varies from country to country. For instance, in Cuba, Iceland, Turkey and North Korea pornography of any kind is illegal. Throughout much of Europe and the Americas, including in Mexico, it is legal with the exception of violent or non-consensual acts, human trafficking or when it involves minors. Not surprisingly, pornography involving minors is prohibited worldwide. But it seems that pornography feeds on prohibition and taboos, because that is where it latches its impulse to push boundaries. Wherever there is a prohibition, pornography will do whatever it takes to break it and continue with a dizzying questioning of morality and pursuing the staging of the most intimate fantasies.

The defenders of “morality” contend that the perverse desires that lead to violence and rape can be eradicated if the source that feeds them –pornography- is annihilated; they consider it as the legitimizer of violence against women and a crime in and of itself as it incites misconduct. On the other hand, there are the defenders of freedom of sexual expression who claim that trying to avoid the existence of pornography speaks of a repressive society unable to tolerate differences. Currently there is a school of thought that intends to establish a dialogue with existing pornography to try, from within the industry, to generate higher quality content - with no sexism, racism, violence or coercion - to use it as a part of a sex ed program. Even sites such as Pornhub –the largest porn site worldwide, born in Montreal, Canada, and which shares statistics for analysis and research– created the portal Pornhub Sexual Health Center, with the help of a diverse group of experts, to offer information over a variety of sexuality related topics, from how to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIS) to the commitment people acquire at the onset of becoming sexually active. Of course, a topic absent in their platform is the impact of pornography on people’s sexual life.

There are also studies that focus on trying to find the real impact that pornography has on adults’ experiences. For example, a study carried out in Spain in June 2019 by the Universitat de les Illes Balears and the Madrid Youth and Inclusion network, collected almost 2,500 interviews of teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19, analyzing the impact of pornography in their erotic experience, autoeroticism, sexual practices and relationship with violence. Several of these studies analyze pornography as a reflection of the sexual view of society today, rather than as the cause of a postmodern disgrace.

Last century, in the beginning of the 80s, with the advancement of technology and the increasing economic influence of consumers, pornography underwent a transformation. It ceased to be the property of the production companies and began to belong to all potential creators of this content as it became easy to produce, reproduce and distribute.

At the end of that same decade, with the invention of the internet and its popularization in the late 1990s, an even more rapid change came about in the way pornography was produced, sold and distributed. It is no longer one large company that holds the power of censorship; instead, the viewer can now take on the role of producer and distributor, according to their own wishes and ideologies. The censorship for hegemony in power is diluted in the fantasy or perversion of each individual. Anyone can, as Naief says:

“Show the world through a camera what one does in private, expose one’s own pleasure. Establishing the abolition of the limits of the private space and transforming it into a stage for sexual representation.³

This generates a change in perspectives towards pornography. The public and private spheres overlap, modesty fades away and other categories emerge beyond the image of distant and unreal models, of actors who pose in front of a camera but who will never in fact be reached. The viewer is now an actor and director of his own fantasy. Amateur pornography, which emerges and gains strength is:

“a pornographic territory where the norms of what can be displayed are not respected, where sometimes honest experimentation of the protagonists can be seen and not the collections of clichés on which commercial pornography is sustained. Thus, amateur pornography found its natural space on the internet, a gigantic canvas where ordinary people could express their bodily confessions and document their erotic fantasies to share them with thousands or millions of unknown web surfers in practically any corner of the planet”.⁴

The internet, diverse and full of important content of all kinds, is today also an endless source of pornography through which viewers can spend hours interacting with an infinite variety of sexual content to which they can even become addicted.

“There is no doubt that the proliferation of pornography and its ease of access has transformed the fantasies of millions of people in the world, in some cases widening their horizons and in others enslaving them to the obsession of materializing their fantasies”.⁵

There is no end; there is always the possibility of image after image to continue awakening a desire already numb by countless stimuli. For many, pornography invades their entire world, thoughts, obsessions and even social relationships. Some sociologists argue that the generation born in the 90s could be considered a pornonative generation— that is, their discovery of porn preceded that of their own sexuality.

Pornography is also a business that generates enormous income online. According to Online MBA Programs,⁶ the annual value of the international porn industry reaches 5 billion US dollars a year. This positions it as one of the most powerful industries today. According to Media Family Safe,⁷ it generates more revenue than the top technology companies - such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix and Earth Link - combined.

According to a 2015 study by the University of Navarra (UNAV), there are more than 500 million web pages of pornographic material. The countries that consume the most in this industry are the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain. Mexico ranked eleven. Every second $3 million is spent on pornography and viewed by 28,258 users. Every day, 2.5 billion emails containing pornographic content are exchanged. Of all search requests, 25% relate to pornography, totaling 68 million per day. Of all downloads on the internet, 35% are pornographic. Just Pornhub registers three million visits per hour and eight times more data volume per day than Facebook. On this site alone, one million hours were watched in 2018, the equivalent of 115 years of erotic content. Close to 61% of people search for the material through their cell phone, 28% on a computer and 11% on a tablet. Notably, 34% of internet users have been directed to pornographic sites that they have not requested to visit.

Family Safe statistics show that children around the world begin to view pornography on average at 11 years of age and the largest group of internet pornography viewers in the world are adolescents between the ages of 12 to 17. Results from the research study New Pornography and Changes in Interpersonal Relationships conducted by the Universitat de les Illes Balears and the Madrid Youth and Inclusion Network showed that 70% of youth over 16 watch it, one in four men began their consumption before the age of 13 and the earliest age recorded for contact with porn was around eight years of age.

In Mexico, there is limited research on the impact of pornography in general and practically none in regard to the experience of children and adolescents in relation to it.That is why, at Educational Counseling and Prevention, we have taken on the task of analyzing this relationship and today we know – based on our daily experience and research using a sample of 730 students from various private educational institutions in Mexico City— that 64% of boys and 52% of girls between the ages of 9 and 13 have come into contact with pornography. More than 90% of the boys and girls who have watched porn did so accidentally the first time. This reaffirms the fact that new technology can put children at risk by providing access to content not suitable for their age, even if they aren’t actively seeking it. In fact, around 70% of the minors in the sample had their first contact through the internet; 17% through a magazine and 10% through pay television. Most of the children in this sample (60% of the boys and 43% of the girls) came into contact with pornography for the first time at 9 or 10 years of age, earlier than international standards. However, 15% did so between the ages of 7 and 8. There are 6% of boys and 3% of girls who started before they were 6 years of age. In addition to this, we find almost 10% of the children in the sample say they watch pornography daily.

As for adolescents from 13 to 18 years of age, the sample size was 1000 students. The survey found that in middle school, when adolescents are between the ages of 13 and 15, 86% of boys and 60% of girls have come into contact with pornography. These percentages increase for high school students (16 to 18 years old), to 98% of boys and 74% of girls.

Beyond what our research revealed to us at that time, it is important to reflect on the impact that the discourse of pornography has on children and youth in understanding their own sexuality. We were struck by the fact that almost 20% of boys and girls and 30% of adolescents in the study believe that pornography teaches them about sexuality. Students take what pornography teaches as real as life itself and not a performance with its own messages.

Although most pornography is legal and involves consenting adults, we must not ignore that certain types of pornography belong to networks of crime interwoven with large companies and governments. The United Nations (UN) maintains that human trafficking can be called the new slavery of the 21st century. According to the latest report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2019, approximately 24 million people worldwide are victims of human trafficking. The report declares that this figure is increasing around the globe. This increase is the result of a greater ability to detect and record data, but also an increase in the incidence of human trafficking, especially in the Americas and parts of Asia. It should be noted that for every identified victim of human trafficking it is estimated that there are 20 more unidentified.

The UNODC report shows that 72% of the victims detected in 2018 worldwide are female. In an increase from the 2016 report, 49% of the cases are adult women and 23% are girls. Most of the victims detected worldwide are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation, linked closely to child pornography.

According to the internet Watch Foundation (IWF) - an organization that works internationally to make the internet safer and remove images of child sexual abuse - every seven minutes a minor is shown being sexually abused online. In 2018 this organization removed more than 105,000 pages of child pornography.

Of these, 39% were under 10 years old, –including 1% who were two years old or under. Approximately 78% of the victims were girls. According to estimates by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), child pornography is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world, after drug trafficking. Many of the child pornography videos are recorded by members of crime networks, while others are amateur films by tourists who establish relationships with minors in countries that have “sex tourism” and share it with other pedophiles.

Mexico is listed as a source, transit and destination for human trafficking for the purpose of sexual, commercial and forced labor, considering women and children, indigenous people and undocumented migrants as the most vulnerable groups. In Mexico, statistics on this crime are scarce and in some states there is simply no information about it. According to the 2019 report of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), estimates of the number of victims of human trafficking in Mexico vary between 50,000 and 500,000 cases, even though the Attorney Generals’ and Prosecutor Generals’ offices identified just 5,245 victims of human trafficking crimes nationwide that year.

The report claims that girls and women represent the highest percentage of victims of this kind of crime with 85%, while boys and men represent 15%. Among the victims, 27% are children and adolescents. This means that every year there are 20,000 victims of sexual exploitation and 85,000 minors who are used in acts of pornography.

According to a report from Mexican Senate, Mexico ranks first in the dissemination of child pornography at the international level, a situation confirmed by the Attorney General’s Office for Crimes ofViolence against Women and Human Trafficking. The National Institute of Women reports human trafficking produces 9.5 billion us dollars annually. Unfortunately, according to UNICEF, every month 100 minors in Mexico are victims of child pornography networks that operate on the internet, while their parents thought that they were safe inside their homes.

In Mexico, as in other countries, impunity reigns concerning this matter. According to the same 2019 CDNH report, criminal action was taken in only 10% of human trafficking federal investigations. The United States Department of State, which monitors the efforts implemented by governments in their fight against human trafficking and classifies them into three levels depending on government compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of this terrible problem, has classified Mexico since 2012 as Level 2, because although it makes an effort to meet the standards, it does not comply with them. As an example, it would suffice to mention that the obligation to implement a system that provides reliable information on crimes related to human trafficking in the country has not been fulfilled.

Regarding prevention, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) mandate to develop prevention modules for the different school cycles that must be included in the curriculum of basic education in Mexico has not been fulfilled either. The few references found today are limited to Civic and Ethical Formation books and are incomplete, decontextualized and sometimes erroneous. The Education sector has no public policies aimed at girls, boys and adolescents to prevent human trafficking – let alone policies to prevent the impact of pornography or at least provide integral sexual education - this sector being one of the most relevant for their direct contact with one of the populations most vulnerable to these crimes.

In a nation in which, many would agree, education is in crisis, now is the time to focus our efforts on education and prevention; on assuming the responsibility that adults have to send a clear message on this matter, to allow girls, boys and adolescents to avoid risks. The objective is to care for the relationship that our children have with the internet.

Worldwide, 1 out of 3 internet users is a child; however, as described in the report The Worldwide State of Children 2017: Children in a Digital World, not enough measures are taken to protect them from the risks of the virtual world, safeguard the trail of information created by their online activities and increase their access to safe and high-quality content.

In Mexico, 50% of children between 6 and 11 are internet users and 27% have a mobile phone. This figure increases for teenagers, where 80% and 94% of teenage girls and boys respectively (12 to 17 years old) are internet users and 75% have access to a cell phone.

The UNICEF document makes it clear that the obligation to protect children in the digital world falls on everyone - governments, families, schools and other institutions. However, it is also the case that the private sector - especially the technology and telecommunications industries - holds the unique and important responsibility to influence the way in which digital technology impacts children, a responsibility that has not been taken seriously enough. The private sector must promote the creation of ethical standards for the industry in relation to data and privacy, as well as other practices that benefit and protect children when they are online. UNICEF asks that children are placed at the center of digital policy to care for their physical and emotional integrity.

The history of pornography and the data from our investigations allow us to observe how it is immersed in power dynamics, so we must make it clear that it is a show for adults, where the adult can choose from a Playboy, a sadomasochistic video, or even produce his own fantasy to give to the world. Pornography is also a vast, sometimes illicit, business, that reflects the desires, fantasies and perversions of a diverse adult world, with different ideologies and discourses. The question would be: What is this erotic adult world doing invading the life and views of children?